(Surprise Puppy)

Frankie by Tracey Ayton

I mean, obviously, dogs shouldn't really be eating ice cream but....  AWWW.

(Apparently she is an Italian Pointer, no comments on the ice cream flavour although it looks pretty good too.)

That is all.

- RS

La Grotta Ices, Spa Terminus

Pictures via @LaGrottaIces

This ice cream date has been a long time coming. Kitty Travers started selling ice creams from the back of an ape in 2009 and I have been wanting to try one ever since. She flitted through farmers's markets spreading happiness and chilled deliciousness and I repeatedly missed her. La Grotta Ices and I passed each other like ships in the night. Or like a ship and an erratically steered dinghy in the night. For a while she had a semi-regular spot at Maltby market but on the one occasion I managed to coincide with her she had sold out. Cruel fate...

However, we were serendipitously united last Saturday. It wasn't even intentional which, I suppose, is how these things often work. Travers currently has a fairly permanent space at Spa Terminus (the railway arches deeper into Bermondsey where many of the Maltby Street wholesalers have decamped to - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) and despite the sun being rather past the yardarm there was still ice cream!

I had a cup (always a cup - perhaps I shall expound on this at a later date, look forward to that treat) of 'bitter chocolate caramel' and 'Belle du Louvain plum custard'. The chocolate was nice but the plum was wonderful. I thought there was something slightly off about the chocolate; I love bitter chocolate and I think it makes for great ice cream but bitter caramel is a less tempting proposition and this ice cream maybe leaned slightly towards the latter. I appreciate the culinary world's recent experiments with caramel and a well balanced salted caramel is mouthjoy itself but is sugar interesting/complex enough to stand apart from its sweetness? Gelupo have recently rechristened their salted caramel ice cream as 'salted burnt sugar' and never a truer name. Although they are generally infallible I have to pass on this one - it does what it says on the tin and what it says on the tin is not ideal.

But the plum, heaven. I think I've read somewhere that Travers loves making fruit-based ice cream and rightfully so because she has nailed it. This was very much an ice cream, not a sorbet - rich, smooth, creamy. It was thick and velvety and dotted with chunks of biscuit, possibly Ameretti although I'd be inclined to say a brown butter biscuit perhaps? Whatever they were, they were delicious, holding their form but not interrupting the ice cream. It was a thing of glory and mouth is watering thinking about it.

WELL WORTH THE WAIT. Also, overheard, La Grotta Ices aren't made by stirring the cooling mixture to prevent crystallization but rather by freezing the mixture and then slicing with blades to break the ice crystals. Intriguing. Anyway, perfect ten on the plum and I will be back to Spa Terminus soon for more.

- RS

In the Beginning

There was the word and the word was ice cream.

Well, that is two words and a trifle blasphemous perhaps but the sentiment stands.

I think subconsciously I always believed that my love of ice cream would, if not diminish, at least become less childishly joyous as I sidled into adulthood. In this, as in so many other things, life is proving me wrong. My love has matured into a beautiful obsession that, as a London dweller, enthusiastic traveler, home cook and greedy pig, I have plenty of opportunities to indulge.

This is my space to wax poetic about gelaterias, recipes and favourites. All is ice cream.